“life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel” Horace Walpole

Rationale Behind Gay People? A Discussion on Morality

It was going through the blog stats of Schmitz Blitz and was interested by the search terms that brought it up:

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sex

3

shirtless hunks bagging groceries

3

religious advocacy

1

definition of counter arguments

1

rationale behind gay people?

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the ten seeks

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skinheads usa soldiers of the race war

1

First off, I couldn’t figure out how the term ‘sex’ led to my blog three times today alone (besides the fact that I talk about same sex marriage rather frequently) .

Then I was interested that someone searched ‘rationale behind gay people?’ to get to Schmitz Blitz. Beyond the fact that they do exist, I’ve not pondered much about why. I’m familiar with the standard evolutionary issues that often come up, but beyond that I was curious about what other people wanted to know about the question.

So I ran a search of the term myself and found that this entry from the blog Samson Blinded came up fourth (Schmitz Blitz was the first). The author offers a very comprehensive report on the recent developments in rabbinical thinking over the issue of homosexuality. And I think he nails the discourse right on the head in his general thesis that there is a great split in Jewish though between the Reform (and he claims Conservative too) and Orthodox traditions–that the former have generally adopted a reinterpretation of Scripture (if not flat out rejection) to be more in line with contemporary models of morality.

I’d also say that the author provides an excellent defense against the claim that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality (though I have attempted to make that stretch). To that point, in defense of the Reform rabbis, I would only offer that perhaps there is a case that there must be more to the law than just the letter. The Bible was written by humans afterall (even if you believe that it is the literal Word of God), and I generally have a lack of faith in the competency and general goodness of people, especially when given the task of writing down God Almighty’s words.

The author eventually concludes:

The abominable character of the action [of homosexual intercourse] is a rationale per se. Why? Because. Ask why having sex with one’s mother is abomination or eating excrement. Because. Society evolved that way. The opposite behavior attitude proved evolutionarily competitive. Jews outlived homosexual Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. Do ethical standards change? Yes, usually before societies collapse.

As I originally suspected, this would all come back to evolution, in a way. Though the author does touch upon an important point: the role the emotion of disgust plays in our moral reasoning. A recent NYT profile on John Haidt, moral psychologist at the University of Virginia, provided a discussion of his views on the moral implications of disgust. Haidt argues that disgust originally developed as a deterrent mechanism to defend against things that would cause physical ills, such as raw meet and excrement. Disgust “was then extended to many other categories…to people who were unclean, to unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals.” From that a moral system with the virtue of purity develops.

Of course the counter to this emotional/evolutionary based system of morality is to say that I believe very many things are disgusting, but I don’t think that in of itself, makes them wrong. I think this has a lot to do with the extraordinary advances we’ve had in medical technology in the modern era. We are now much more likely to survive any disgusting thing that may cause us illness. Thus the whole rationale behind this moral system is undermined by modern developments. It seems therefor that since circumstances have changed since the crafting of the Bible, our moral systems should evolve as well, if you will, beyond the ones set up by ancient and tribal societies.

So back to Samson Blinded’s other general thesis against gay marriage. With all of this said about homosexuality and the Scripture, I don’t think it has (or at least it ought not have) any bearing on the current debate over civil marriage equality. If religious folks are worried that legal equality for all US citizens (ie. same sex civil marriage) might undermine their religiously based traditional model of marriage, perhaps they should be more ardent supporters of the separation of church and state.

An extra tid bit: There was a brilliant commentary on the Sarah Silverman Program last night on the relationship between disgust, morality and the law. Here’s a link–if you can stomach her crassness.